Campaign demands telecoms unlock the FM radio found in many smartphones
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
Try doing this in India and no consumer would touch your phone. Contracts are not allowed in India. I am mildly proud that third world country telcos are much more open compared to western ones
I'm optimistic that providers are moving away from the phone with data concept to the just data, bring us a phone concept and it can't happen soon enough. Less bundling, less bloat, less control of my device a telco has the better. There are still plenty of other real barriers, but it's a start.
The market might be (slowly) responding...
I was about to get the new iPhone anyways, so I went to Verizon and paid cash for it. I drove home, got on their web site and signed up for a $60/mo. pre-paid plan (unlimited calling and texting, and 3.5 GB of data) -- and I can tether now. My service is effectively the same and it's costing me half as much (and they even have a cheaper, $45/mo. plan).
We got our AT&T bill down from $120/mo (for two phones) to between $45 and $62/mo (for three phones). When it was just me (I was the guinea pig testing before we ported my wife's phone over), my bill would regularly be $25-30. Ting isn't "unlimited", but rather has a fairly simple "use your phone and we'll bill you fairly" mindset. They also have a calculator where you can have them login to your existing carrier, pull the billing details, and estimate your Ting bill. I was initially uncomfortable with the pay-per-use nature, but the reality has been that it's way cheaper for us. If you are a road warrior salesperson who never uses wifi, it may not be as good for you.
Naturally, since it's pay-what-you-use, tethering is perfectly fine.
Ting does offer a referral bonus where I think you get $25 and I get $25. I'm not shilling for them nor stumping for referrals, but if you do care to use the referral link, it's https://z9prmb2f3t5.ting.com/
I am also saving hundreds of dollars per year (especially since I spend a lot of time outside the USA... If you don't use Ting during a month, the bill is like $7 or so.
I bought an unlocked MotoG and with Net10 I pay either $40 for 3GB or $50 for 5GB depending on my expected usage for the month (you can get bigger plans if you want at $10-for-2GB increments). If you go over you are not cut off, just restricted to 2G service (latency is horrible though). Tethering is technically against the rules but they don't really care, I've never gotten in trouble. You either get carried on T-Mobile or ATT.
I do ATT and it works fine - I am up north right now in Bumfuck MI (a cabin in the middle of a National Forest) and I have 4/5 bars of 4G signal. I think coverage worries are a thing of the past unless you are using one of those carriers that is specifically city-only. I get around and it's just never been a problem for me.
I buy refills through Callingmart. They don't charge all the extra fees that Net10 does directly (typically an extra $4/mo or so), they do 1% loyalty cashback for your next order, and they constantly run 3% off coupons (check retailmenot.com). So for a $50 refill that costs $54 though Net10's store I am at $46.50 out the door. They have refills for tons of carriers, worth checking out if you're monthly.
I said it below and got down voted but if you aren't unlocked and monthly you are getting screwed hard. My phone is rooted and has an unlocked bootloader, so I can run CyanogenMod (i.e. I can get security updates instead of being tied to the carrier's firmware), use the radio, tether, or anything else I want. I have absolutely zero ties binding me to my carrier - if next month some other carrier offers a better deal (or my current one tries to screw me) I just buy a $2 SIM-kit, swap and activate, and point my Google Voice number at the new SIM. Takes five minutes of work and nobody else even needs to know I changed carriers. The only downside is that you need to pay for a phone upfront instead of on a phone plan since nobody will finance an unlocked phone (hello startup idea).
I'm paying over twice as much, but have had no issues with setting up wifi tethering... though I really need to run updates on my laptop before road trips, as I killed 9gb in one day (I don't use my personal laptop much).
All said though, I'm much happier with the better coverage, but miss the frugal bills I've had the past 6 years.
Germany is one of the worst telecom markets in Europe, but you can get 2 GB of data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts for 12.99 € without contract.
In France you pay 19.99 € without contract for unlimited calls, unlimited SMS and MMS, and 50 GB.
The main difference is how the market is regulated. Better regulation leads to lower prices for consumer.
This is one of the reasons why CDMA is/was much more popular is the US than elsewhere. CDMA requires fewer towers than GSM for equivalent geographical coverage. This is what allowed Verizon (CDMA) to advertise that they covered so much more of the United States than AT&T (GSM) did.
And ofcourse tethering is enabled.
I switched to their 2GB plan after Three announced their price increases.
(The registered address of both companies is the same, if you'd like a quick verification of this.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
eg not allowed at all on their unlimited data tarriff: https://www.giffgaff.com/support/calls-and-internet/unlimite...
How is "lack of competition" the problem? Pretty much everywhere you can get cellular coverage from four different major carriers, plus several MVNOs. If it was so easy to offer better service than AT&T/Verizon for less money, then Sprint or T-Mobile would do it and take over the market. Nothing is stopping them.
And it's not a Pepsi/Coke situation where a small number of oligopolists have an incentive to maintain the status quo because they're all benefiting from it. Sprint and T-Mobile have every incentive to compete--Sprint is hemorrhaging money and while T-Mobile is profitable, its profits don't justify its CAPEX.
Look at T-Mobile. Last year, they made $733 million in net income on $32 billion in revenue. Google, in comparison, made 20x the profit on just 2x the revenue. So with T-Mobile, there's not a lot of fat to cut. So why isn't everyone a T-Mobile customer?
Willing to pay a premium for the best: Big Red
I honestly don't know: AT&T
Value is paramount: TMo
Tech enthusiast: Google Fi
Coverage and price is more important than quality: Sprint
With the plan thing going away, there's more mobility in the phone market. The cost of good enough phones has gone down, providers can't lock their phones to their service anymore and there aren't so many coverage hold-outs where you HAD to get Verizon because Sprint didn't operate in your location.
The barriers to entry for a new telco are staggering, not as much as landline operators of course, but it's certainly not nominal. T-Mobile has historically been a phone of the urban population because that's where they get the most bang for their buck so it was difficult to become a household name.
Americans use their phones differently and I guess I'm in the minority by tethering often. I think if there was more diversity in the phone market, I wouldn't have to play these privacy tracking games, deal with tethering locked-down, misc phone crippling etc.
It's getting better, but slowly. If you don't use your phone like 90% of Americans use their phone, there might not be an American telco that serves your interests.
A Telco blocking features of a phone, any features is like stealing from you. I buy an LG or Samsung for the features listed on the box or website and if I found a feature to be missing the box and phone will be promptly returned and I'd demand my money back, and contract canceled! It's just an unthinkable thing for a Telco to do.
I understand and agree with the outrage you feel, but the status quo is powerful and slow to change. There are telcos that explicitly provide tethering in their plans as a standard feature, and bringing an outside device to operate with the telco is easier than it used to be, so maybe things are starting to shift.
They act like you need a whitelisted IMEI, but the network doesn't actually care. The tricky part is getting a SIM activated on their network.
The store managers pretend like they can't give/sell just a SIM. They're supposed to give them to you for free, but lie to sell you a handset. You can buy them from resellers who DGAF. They also pretend you need a whitelisted IMEI to activate the SIM card, their website and in-store people enforce this rule. I've always had good luck calling their 1-800 number and playing dumb. At the very worst you can probably find an old or broken verizon phone for free/cheap and use that IMEI.
$500 early termination fee, 8-12 weeks for a "partial refund" via cheque ;)
Also afaik T-Mobile officially states that only 100MB of tethering is included, but it seems that they haven't enforced this for some time now.
Also, their CEO is kind of a dick, and seems childish on Twitter after the whole EFF thing.
I've had Nexus and iPhone devices on multiple TMobile plans, never had any trouble tethering: just turn it on like normal for the OS.
The only thing I've had happen was I think I remember some years back, I was on a grandfathered unlimited plan from before smartphones and tethering were ubiquitous, they started new plans with unlimited data+tethering and if I tethered too much it'd redirect to a captive page saying "please don't" and throttle me pretty heavily to convince me to switch, but the Simple Choice plan I have now is actually cheaper than that plan was.
Hi, I turned on my direct-from-Google Nexus 5's hotspot, connected my laptop, and posted this comment. T-Mobile's my provider, and I don't have any of their software on my phone. I also haven't taken any special steps to enable it (just the usual change in the settings menu). I'm curious which "hoops" you're referring to.
Root and manually add an iptables rule and you're good to go. Rather lame Google would intentionally cripple something on the client side.
Also, their employees will lie about their credit check not being a hard pull on your credit report that harms your credit. The Internet has plenty of reports to the contrary. Having your credit run for a hotspot like they want to do is ridiculous. No MNVO ever required once from me.
That said, T-Mobile's network is fairly good here in NY. Their customer service and sales are horrible though. I am not sure if the others are much better as I have not interacted with them much. My first cell phone was on Virgin Mobile USA, which spared me from experiencing this nonsense until later in life.
Also, if you want to use iPhone, you must get a contract with Softbank.
What do you mean?
>You must get a contract with SoftBank
Why? What do they offer that requires a contract? I'm not doubting you, but everything I can find online is poorly-translated pages that don't tell me much.
They are allowed, they used to exist. Very few people are willing to use the contracts. It never made much sense because people use prepaid and don't want to be stuck to one carrier.
B) The article isn't even about America, or American telcos.
That said, I could make similiar remarks about telecommunications companies still charging for phone service given that I do not pay monthly bills for it anymore, yet have it. If RingPlus' advertising and freemium business model turns out to be sustainable, then I ought to still have "free" service a few years from now.
Unlimited data with tethering is a recipe for disaster; capped data plans usually do have tethering.
I've been buying unlocked for the last 3 years, so I've been able to avoid this.
Third world is not a politically correct phrase, developing world is a good compromise although not perfect still.
That is a false premise, especially taking into account the parent comment didn't intend to use "third world country" in a malicious but in a factually correct way.
I live in the U.S, I would never say third world country when talking to some one from another country in the developing world.
The reason is that the "FM radio chip" is usually not a separate IC that has to be designed in, but just a (tiny) part of an N-in-1 combo chip that provides WiFi, GPS, and BT, so all it needs is for support to be in the software to work. Here's one which has a FM transmitter too:
http://www.mediatek.com/en/products/connectivity/wifi/consum...
Since many of these relatively brandless smartphones are a direct copy of a reference design from the SoC manufacturer, designed to show off all the features, they automatically inherit those features and the companies who make them wouldn't spend extra effort just to remove functionality. The fact that the market for them is heavily feature-driven also means one less bullet point in the feature list is going to be noticed easily.
Even the Nexus phones don't have FM radio, probably for the same reasons (Google makes money when you buy music through Google Play, or stream it via Google Play Music).
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-the-Google-Nexus-devices-have...
http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-smallest-tv-antenna/42558/
We can ignore the "without having to compromise" remark gizmag made. Every antenna makes some sort of compromise.
That said, I now know what I want to see in my next phone. OTA TV. :)
Ed: Here's an example of it being used. There's a little antenna plugged in the headphone port. Pretty neat trick.
Most TV channels are on UHF and nearly all antennas are designed for UHF. They are able to get poor reception of the high VHF channels and no reception of the low VHF channels. The "world's smallest" TV antenna that I linked should have been designed for UHF too.
My Nokia N900 had one and I've missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!
You know, that's an amazingly depressing thought: how many other dead-simple technologies have we been prevented from using because of ingrained interests?
OTOH, Bluetooth is certainly a better idea for personal telephone calls.
I drive rentals a lot. Like, a lot. Across dozens of brands and models, it's never taken me more than a minute to pair my phone.
Also, the 3.5mm aux plug is even easier to use than tuning a radio to any frequency, and the quality is vastly better. It's a long time since I've seen a car without it.
I agree, I really like cars with the 3.5mm aux plug but the two cars I have most experience with (Hyundai i20 and a 2010 Falcon AU) don't have them.
Turns out they're heavily regulated by the FCC. It all boils down to the requirement that you can't interfere with anyone else's reception. Any transmission strength that gives acceptable quality would do that. So they are artificially stunted.
It's possible that your N900 is exceeding legal signal strengths.
SiriusXM satellite radio is the same way as FM broadcast radio with all the commercials. I pay an outrageous amount to them every month for service -- for my truck, car, motorcycle, and the Internet streaming "add-on" (I have a tabletop radio on a nightstand next to my bed) -- and get so annoyed by all the commercials.
I'm not sure how much they make off of me, as an individual subscriber, per month, from the advertisers but I would happily pay much more every month (probably another 50% or so) for a 100% commercial-free option -- and I'm sure that's gotta be way more than what they're getting from the advertisers for me.
I mostly drive my truck, which I just bought in August 2015. SiriusXM was free for 90 days. Before it expired, I received a "promo" deal in the mail and paid for a year or service at that time.
Likewise, I bought my car in June 2014. SiriusXM was free for 90 days and then I signed up for, I believe, a quarterly package. I, personally, have only driven my car twice in the last six months or so -- probably less than five times since I bought the truck. My girlfriend has a Jeep but she drives my car most of the time, so I keep that subscription active because she prefers the satellite radio over FM, Pandora/iTunes/etc. Otherwise, I would cancel service in the car.
I also have a package and receiver on my Harley. Due to the weather, I get to ride it perhaps half of the year. It's an inconvenience to call up and add it to my account in the spring and then remember to remove it as winter nears and the bike goes into the garage for months. Besides, we occasionally have nice days in the winter when I can ride and I want it to "just work".
Then, there's the Internet streaming service. I have the SiriusXM app on my iPhone (so I can play it via Bluetooth when in someone else's vehicle, etc.) and Roku and we have a "tabletop" receiver next to the bed. We often turn it on when going to bed, the girlfriend will listen to it while getting ready for work, etc.
In short, I do like the service. I'm probably paying them more than I should but I likely won't cancel it anytime soon. As I said above, though, I'd gladly pay them more for an "{ad|commercial}-free" version.
NAB is involved [2] in this latest heroic campaign for consumer choice too, of course, although you wouldn't know it to look at the website [3].
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/radio-riaa-manda...
[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/18
[2] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-wide-consum...
Having radios everywhere is obviously always in the radio industry's best interests. Back in 2010 the music industry got involved because they were trying to wring extra performance rights fees out of radio, which the radio folks clearly were not interested in, but the proposed compromise was that music industry lobbyists would throw their weight behind the "radios everywhere" thing, and radio would presumably benefit enough from that to cover the new hefty performance fees.
The Performance Rights Act didn't go anywhere, looks like music industry tried again last year with the "Fair Play, Fair Pay" bill.
that's what they use in most of the cases. on my phone, the radio refuses to function until a headphone is plugged in.
Of course, headphones as antennas will stop working when headphones go USB-C or an Apple-specific connector.
Both FM and AM should require separate antennas in the phone, although maybe the one intended for cellular communications could be used for FM without failing to picture up anything at all. It would be surprising if someone could avoid a separate antenna for AM.
Am I wrong to think that other companies act the same? What else could be a reason to disable the FM radio in a phone? When you're designing a product, every feature costs money to develop and support, and in the race to the bottom nature of consumer electronics it might make sense to not support FM radio. Most of my friends (at least the normal ones) seem to prefer something like Pandora over FM for background music.
What's stopping someone from selling a phone that has a functional FM radio? I usually say the following jokingly, but this seems like a problem for the free market to fix.
The market for phones in the US is not free because they're generally tied to carriers, and the market for carriers is highly unfree because it's a natural monopoly with a weak government regulator.
Nothing. They already exist. You could buy one today. I'm sure if you looked on Amazon or eBay you could find plenty of unlocked phones with working FM radios. Pair that with a SIM from your network of choice and you're done.
What's being discussed is about networks disabling the radio on contract phones.
It's got a screen, audio, and at least one antenna. I'm no electrical engineer but surely that's something that's at least theoretically possible...
Regular ATSC/DVB-T broadcasts do not cope well with a moving receiver.
Pretty much no one paid for the licensing, thus there was no content. And as there was no content, no one bought the phones.
Then came LTE and now we can just stream stuff over the interwebs.
In any case, as annoying as it may be that they don't offer free FM radio, I don't see why for-profit businesses should be under any obligation to do so.
The whole point is that manufacturers have done this, the phone hardware and software generally support FM radio, for many models the (non-US) advertising material lists that feature - but the carriers have intentionally gone out of their way to disable it.
Around here the only thing at all decent is NPR, and that content is all available via podcast with much better audio fidelity, and seeking.
Also in emergency type situations it could be helpful.
And yes, I get the arguments that this is a feature already on the phone, carriers are assholes, etc., but I've had multiple phones with this feature, and found multiple people who have phones who have this feature, and who don't care. And this was on Virgin Mobile, which on a freedom scale of 1 to Richard Stallman is a solid Steve Ballmer.